Sense and Sensibility - Thoughts
Sorry for this jumble of thoughts, but I have no one in real life I can direct them at haha.
I randomly realized that I haven't read any of Jane Austen's work and have been listening to them by audiobook. Started with Pride and Prejudice and loved it, listened to Sense and Sensibility, and have just started Emma. I've definitely had to look up some terms and how things worked in her time, but they haven't been much harder to "read" than a modern novel. What surprised me most was probably how funny they've been, Emma has been especially hilarious so far, albeit also frequently infuriating. Just got to Harriet turning down Robert Martin and the charade, peering through my fingers in horror as Emma keeps leading them both down the wrong path. Fingers desperately crossed that Harriet eventually gets out of her clutches and ends up with him after all!
I just had some thoughts I've been working through about S&S, I enjoyed it but ultimately found it a bit unsatisfying and not as well written as P&P. I've only listened it to it once, so if I'm majorly mistaken about anything please let me know! I appreciate the overall theme of Elinor needing a bit more sensibility and Marianne a bit more sense, but thought the story was too imbalanced for it to really land for me. It doesn't need to be exactly 50/50 of course, but the vast majority of the story is still spent on Elinor having to clean up after Marianne's messes and take care of her, and Marianne doesn't really reciprocate. I wonder if it might have worked better if Marianne's thoughtlessness ended up damaging Elinor in some way, resulting in her having to grow up a bit and make things right for her sister's sake. Not sure how that would happen in a historically reasonable way, but just a thought I had.
I also didn't really like the final pairings haha. I'm mostly fine with Elinor/Edward, I appreciate him being hamstrung by his situation and not having much of a way out of his kind of abusive family (would they have been thought of that way back then?). Elinor still has to prod him to do the prudent thing with his mother but he has enough common sense that she won't be managing him like she had to do with her sister and mother at least. He just didn't have much presence, honestly I was much more invested in the quiet, seething hatred between her and Lucy, every conversation between them was hysterical.
But what I really disliked was Marianne/Colonel Brandon. It's not the age gap, I'm fine glossing over that kind of thing in older works. What really bothered me was how one-sided the interest was, it's all well and good to say Colonel Brandon actually has a lot of the romantic soul she's looking for in a partner with some sense to balance her out, but she's so disinterested in and rude to him that it makes his focus on her seem more like him trying to make things right for Eliza, instead of any merit on Marianne's part. Even just one scene where she's not completely dismissing him would have worked wonders.
Looking back at all that I'm realizing what bothers me most ultimately is how Marianne is written, her needs and problems frequently suck all the air out of the room, and in the end although she learns her lesson it's after having Elinor once again take care of her, and not because of anything she does herself. Even Willoughby's gross monologue is related to Elinor, who then has to think about how best to convey that information to her recently sick sister!
Despite all that I did enjoy it for the most part, I wouldn't be writing so much about a work I hated haha. I found it an interesting contrast to P&P and do like that in both everything doesn't work out completely neatly with all the "bad guys" punished, life's just not fair sometimes. I love Lucy gaslighting and girlbossing herself in to money and continuing her rivalry with Elinor to the end of their days. And I could not get enough of Mrs. Jennings, who I loved and was definitely my favorite character. Her mentioning Colonel Brandon and Elinor getting together did give me a brief glimmer of hope that that's where the story was going to shift, but alas. Anyway, maybe the moral should have been that they both could have learned to be more like Mrs. Jennings, who was gossipy and forthright but had a good heart, who loved a good romance but was also quite pragmatic and capable. Obviously it's implied, but I definitely wouldn't have minded that as a more explicit thesis statement haha.
Anyway thanks for reading to the end if you did!